


Brother of Death

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Established Relationship, Fantasy, M/M, Modern Setting Retelling of Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 22:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: The thing about Sleep.





	Brother of Death

At midnight, beneath the silvery-blue light of the moon, the world lit up before Yongbok's eyes.

  
  
Not in the most obvious of ways. The moon did shine bright and its glow reflected off of the rivers and the clouds and the glass windows of the buildings but this kind of light was not so poetic. The dreams of humans became tangible, shimmering things under the cover of night. As they lay in their beds dreaming, their subconscious minds became a Great Tapestry and Yongbok could see these colorful threads of emotion and thought criss-crossing the sky. Shining. Brighter than any star.

  
  
Only Yongbok could see them, tasked as he was with looking over them. _Born_ as he was to watch them and find meaning in them. Tend to them. Only he could interpret them. The complicated and tangled shapes they made, the feelings that pulsed through them. Happiness. Joy. Fear. Lust. Anger. He learned of the world through these things. He learned of humans through these things.

 

As the god of Sleep, it was his duty, yet Yongbok found even such a monumental responsibility simple, repetitive and mind-numbing.

 

His hands were small and his fingers were nimble, allowing him to work and weave the threads simply, fixing what was worn and detangling dreams before they had the opportunity to knot up the rest of the pattern. Only he could do this...

 

...but even gods grew weary and bored.

 

He longed for something else. He longed to be able to do more with his hands. To find new ways to put them to use. _Anything_ , he thought. He longed to be anything other than Sleep.

  
  
Millennia must have passed since he was born, tending to the Great Tapestry, mending and looking after dreams--millennia of just existing--but one evening, something in particular caught his eye. It had just been a movement in a dream. A face. A smile. But it had been enough to make him look up from his task and lay eyes on... him.   
  


 

 

  
  
When the sun rose in the morning and humans woke to use their limited daylight hours, the threads of their dreams vanished. With no more tasks until night fell, Yongbok wandered across the earth, moving from continent to continent, city to city, hoping to find the man he'd caught a glimpse of in someone else's dreams.

  
  
Under the watchful gaze of the sun, he never stopped his search, but when night returned and the moon showed her beautiful face, Yongbok was forced to attend to his duties.

 

It continued in such a way for days. Months, perhaps? He always found it difficult to keep track of the way humans measure time.

  
  
As he untangled dreams each night, he plucked his thin fingers across them like strings on a harp and listened to the music they made, all in hopes of finding the one strand that would lead him to that man. That one man! That man whose face he was already starting to forget...

  
  
Yongbok's distraction, however, prevented him from detangling a young woman's dreams in time and the strings grew ever more tangled and knotted behind her eyes, even as he carefully pulled on them in a dangerous but necessary attempt to fix his blunder. He was unsuccessful.

 

She never woke up the next morning.

  
  
Saddened, Yongbok felt obligated to stand in her room and wait with her as Death came.

  
  
Even though he stood at her bedside, the human’s mother didn't see him as she struggled to wake her daughter, sobbing. That was the thing about being a god. Certain kinds of Greatness simply could not be perceived.

  
  
Not quite an hour after dawn, his brother appeared: the god of Death, Felix.

 

Of course, Felix wasn’t the name he had been born with. Neither of them had names in the beginning but Yongbok had chosen the words from dreams he’d observed. To him, having a name made him feel that little bit more connected to the world he watched over.

  
  
His brother didn’t seem aware of his presence. Not until Yongbok stepped forward and joined him at the woman’s bedside. Felix stiffened, unable to hide his surprise behind his usual blank stare. "Our paths rarely cross. What brings you here?"

  
  
Yongbok looked up at his brother. Now that the question had been posed to him, it dawned on him that it had been many, many, many… what did humans call them? Years? Yes. It had been many years since he had even seen his brother. "Why is that?" He asked. "Why do we not see each other? Aren’t we the same, my twin?"

 

“We are not the same,” Felix said. “We are different.” His expression darkened. “Only one of us is feared.”

 

That wasn’t an answer to Yongbok’s question. “Is it so terrible for us to be here together?”

  
  
Felix frowned. Or, more accurately, the corners of his lips dipped in a subtle way that only his brother would stand a chance at seeing. "Was this your fault," he asked simply, waving a hand towards the bed, where the mother still sobbed over her eternally sleeping daughter.

  
  
Yongbok sighed. The mother, feeling Sleep’s breath on her neck, became drowsy and her head sank onto the white sheets of her daughter's bed. At last, her crying stopped. Yongbok said, "Take her away pleasantly, okay?"

  
  
Felix gave the slightest of nods and then turned to face the red strings that only he could see. 

 

 

  
  
  
  
A week passed and, haunted by guilt, Yongbok paid better attention to his work.

  
  
In fact, he went above and beyond his call of duty, spending extra time smoothing out the frayed strands that caused nightmares, the pulled taut strands that caused headaches. He crossed the sky repeatedly every night that week, his expert hands never leaving the Great Tapestry. For the first time in an unknowable amount of time, every human slept pleasantly, finding refuge in their dreams. Finding an escape from the world’s stress and dangers.

  
  
Yongbok nearly forgot about the man he'd seen all that time ago until he stumbled across a particular thread that glowed a brighter shade of blue than the others around. No. It was nearly as white as the face of the moon. The fact that its color was different didn't catch Yongbok's attention, but rather that one single thread stretched across the entire inky expanse of the night sky.

  
  
From the eastern horizon to the west, it stretched without fray or tear, without tangle or knot.

  
  
Yongbok couldn't help but be fascinated because never in his life had he encountered such a beautiful dream. Such strong, unshakable passion. A goal that didn't question itself as it pierced through the Great Tapestry.

  
  
Almost without realizing it, he followed that thread across the sky, across the world, until it ended above the forehead of the man he'd seen before. The man of someone else’s dreams.

  
  
He looked kind and gentle, but that did not take away from his strength. A square face, curly hair, dextrous hands. The man lay on the couch in a small room filled with musical instruments and equipment. He slept with an expression of complete peace on his face, his chest rising and falling calmly as he dreamed.

  
  
Yongbok stood beside the couch, watching the magnificence that lay before him: the twist of his eyelashes, the curve of his lips and neck and shoulders.

  
  
Yongbok nearly reached out to touch him, but refrained himself. He wasn't even sure if he could touch the man. Would he even be _able_ to or would his Greatness force his hand to pass right through the human?

  
  
Yongbok decided not to risk it. He only watched instead, his divine task forgotten. He stayed there until the sky turned purple with dawn and then, when the man’s eyes fluttered open with wakefulness, Yongbok took his leave.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Days later, Yongbok half-dozed on a cloud, his small hands clutching at the dense collection of moisture beneath his body.

  
  
The sun was high in the sky and was not supposed to die for a few million years, so when a dark shadow fell across Yongbokss face, he couldn't help but open his eyes and squint up at the darkness. "Felix," he exhaled with relief when he recognized the shape of his brother.

 

“I don’t know what that means.”

 

“It’s your name. Remember?” Yongbok sat up. “The one I gave you.”

  
  
Felix didn’t respond. The cold blackness around him leeched the heat from the air between them. He sat down on the cloud next to Yongbok. "I thought about what you said."

  
  
"What did I say?" Yongbok asked. He couldn’t remember the specifics of the last time they had spoken. When you existed as long as they had, individual conversations became lost beneath the weight of their Great tasks.

  
  
"When you asked about sleep and death being the same." Felix trailed off, glancing over the soft edge of the cloud they sat on at the human world below. "I always thought we were complete opposites. Night and day. Moon and sun. Of course, it would make sense to think that way as that is when our powers are active. It's when we see the threads of fate in the sky."

  
  
Yongbok glanced up. It was daylight so, to him, nothing but a pale blue sky and a bright white sun could be seen over their heads. Although he had never asked, Yongbok was sure that if his twin looked up right now, the sky would be criss-crossed with the tangled strands only he could see.

  
  
"Instead of being the opposite..." Felix added, "...perhaps we're equal halves?"

 

The idea had merit. Sleep and Death were simply the tasseled ends on the same Great Tapestry.

  
  
Felix didn't give Yongbok much of a chance to ponder his strange words. He passed through the cloud as suddenly as he appeared and made his way down to the human world to guide countless more souls through the Tapestry of light and life in the sky.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Yongbok visited his fascinating human the next night, lured by the fact that his dream wasn't in the sky.

  
  
It was because the man was still awake, leaning over some musical computer device and working hard despite the dark circles beneath his eyes.

  
  
Another human came into the room. Smaller, thinner, but just as determined and full of dreams.

 

  
"Chan, I love you," the man said, “but it’s four in the morning and I’m trying to sleep.”

  
  
"Love you too, Changbin,” the fascinating human replied, “but I’m almost done with this song.”

 

“The song will be here in the morning. It’s not going to grow legs and leave.”

 

“But I just broke through my block. I can’t stop now.”

 

Changbin put his hands on the back of Chan’s rolling chair and pulled him away from the console he’d sat in front of all night. “You can stop and you will because if your music wakes me up again, I’m leaving you.”

 

It sounded like a threat, but Chan laughed. “No, you won’t.” He tilted his head back to look up at Changbin standing above him.

 

Changbin leaned forward to attach his lips to Chan's mouth. He said, “You’re right. I won’t. But I at least have to _try_ to keep you on a decent sleep schedule.”

 

Yongbok didn’t know when or why, but a rotting mass of jealousy strangled him by the neck as he stood there and witnessed their comfortable, casual intimacy. He drifted out of the small room and floated back up into the sky.

  
  
Chan’s strong dream wove itself across the Grand Tapestry not too long after.

 

Still fuming with anger, Yongbok floated through the air towards it, surprised at how high the man's subconscious soared. Confidently. Gleaming like a beacon as if it were attempting to outshine the moon herself.

  
  
Yongbok placed his hand on--no, inside--the thread and immediately found himself inside Chan's subconscious.

  
  
He'd only done this a few times before, when a person's psychological state had become so damaged that it could only be repaired from the inside.

  
  
Chan's mental state was bright and strong, despite his tiredness. As he pushed himself farther and farther inside Chan’s dream, his own mind started filling with the man’s thoughts and memories.

  
  
A few of them were sad, a few filled with fright, many were tied to frustration and struggle, but even these darker things were used as inspiration, fuel for creativity. Most of the fascinating man’s dreams were pleasant, though. Happy. Yongbok took notice of the fact that the majority of Chan’s comforting thoughts contained traces of Changbin.

 

The jealousy came back.

  
  
Yongbok hastily let go of Chan's dreams.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
"How does Death work in your eyes, Felix,” Yongbok asked.

  
  
There was a storm brewing over one of the oceans, but the twins still sat on the dark gray clouds, fingers tingling with every crack of lightning, bodies vibrating with every rumble of thunder.

  
  
"What do you mean, brother,” Felix asked.

  
  
Stormy days like this were strange. It was as if the world itself rebelled against Greatness. The black clouds full of rain cut across the entire sky, blocking out the sun and moon, preventing their light from reaching the Grand Tapestry. Without such light, the threads were impossible to see.

 

“Brother,” Felix called out when Yongbok stayed quiet for either seconds or minutes or hours.

 

“What is Death to you,” Yongbok responded.

 

Even more silence. Felix said nothing.

  
  
Yongbok said, "In my eyes, dreams are complicated patterns of threads. Sleep is a quilt and I am the weaver. And right about there..." He pointed to the place high in the sky that seemed to be reserved for Chan's dreams alone. "Up there is one single thread..."

  
  
"...that stretches across the entire sky," his twin completed his sentence. Felix leaned back so that he could stare up at the sky. Not the Grand Tapestry but the sky. The same one the humans saw. "A thread that's so high up that I can hardly reach it. A thread so bright and confident, I can hardly stand to look at it. A thread so full of life I can barely be near it."

  
  
Yongbok was quiet. Jealous. All of this time, he thought Chan was something he could have to himself. _His_ fascinating thing. "Nothing else compares," Yongbok said. "Nothing in the world. I… I want him to be mine. I..." What was that word he so often heard floating around in Chan's dreams. "I love him."

  
  
Felix turned to him. "What?" His voice wasn’t much louder than the thunder that rattled beneath their bodies.

  
  
"I'm in love with him." Yongbok repeated with more confidence. Chan was perfect. An anomaly. A masterpiece. His dreams never frayed, never broke, never got tangled with anyone else's. Yongbok never had to touch it.

 

His thread was always fine the way it was.

 

At first, this pleased Yongbok. He believed that if he worked hard enough, every thread in the sky wouldn't need his meticulous attention. They would all stretch across the sky, bright and blue and Great. If he achieved that, his task would be complete and then he could do something else. Be something else. Anything.

  
  
Yet no matter how hard he had tried these past few weeks, the Grand Tapestry needed his constant doting. The other threads could still snap beneath the weight of their knots or tear from being stretched too thin. He couldn’t look away for very long without the entire pattern threatening to unravel in his hands. It was a hassle, and Chan's dream was a constant reminder of the perfection Yongbok could never create himself.

 

Unless he did something.

  
  
Felix sensed a change in his brother. Worried, he asked, "What are you going to do?"

  
  
"I'm going to make him think of me," Yongbok said simply. Then he descended through the wind and rain and lightning.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Yongbok did as he swore he would.

 

When the storm clouds dissipated and the blue light of the moon caused the threads to glow, he immediately floated towards Chan’s dreams.

  
  
"I want you to be mine," he said as he grabbed a hold of the thick blue thread and entered the man's subconscious. "I don’t want you to be my brother’s. I want you to look at me and tell me you love me, just like you do to... him." Changbin.

  
  
Yongbok dove through Chan’s thoughts and hopes and wishes, only stopping when he passed by one that contained fragments of Changbin. Without hesitation, he removed Changbin's face from such memories, replacing them with his own.

  
  
He worked for hours, but made very little progress. For each single thought he changed, a dozen more with Changbin's face in them would appear before him.

  
  
The sun broke over the horizon and as soon as its orange light hit the blue thread, it vanished instantly, throwing Yongbok from it and waking Chan from a decent night’s sleep.

 

Yongbok sighed. He'd have to wait until night fell again.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Felix knew that every thread he saw had a purpose. No matter how short or long it was, no matter how thick or thin, or how many other strings it weighed down or how many knots it helped free, or many other strings it lifted... Every red strand that crossed the Grand Tapestry was part of a larger formula of events even he couldn't fathom.

  
  
He did not question his duties like his brother did. He wasn’t _curious_ like his twin.

 

He didn’t ask questions. He merely did what he was designed to do.

  
  
That was why he felt so protective over the Grand Tapestry. It was the only thing he knew. The only task he'd ever been given... and Yongbok wanted to destroy that. His twin wanted to go against the system just to be a part of a world he wasn't made for. To live in a world he was too Great for.

 

Each morning, Felix floated through the sky, easily able to pick out the patches in the patterns where his twin had meddled beyond the regular scope of his duties.

  
  
Felix ran his hand over a red thread in the morning sky. The string hummed almost musically at his touch, pulsing in tandem with the heartbeat of the human it was connected to. All Felix had to do was pull it, unravel it, end a life, and he could throw the system off balance just like Yongbok was planning to.

 

  
Felix had the power.

  
  
All he had to do was pull...

  
  
...but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

  
  
He was not selfish or greedy like a human. He revered the Greatness in him and that one small aspect was the main way he and his twin differed. 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Before the sun set that night, Yongbok made his way to Chan’s house only to discover that all the work he had done to Chan’s dreams over the past several nights had been for naught. There Chan and Changbin were, huddled together on the couch, so close they shared their body heat, their breaths.

  
  
Yongbok felt irrational rage bubble up inside him yet he couldn't bring himself to turn away.

  
  
"I love you, Chan," Changbin said, “but don’t you know what time it is?”

  
  
"I’m almost done, Changbin,” Chan replied. Then, quickly, he added, “I love you too.”

 

"What about me?" Yongbok’s shout fell on deaf ears. He knew good and well that his voice was too Great to be heard by human ears. "Why don't you love _me_ ?" Then he asked the question that sat at the center of his being. “Why isn’t there _anyone_ who loves me?”

  
  
Yongbok retreated back into the night sky to sulk.

  
  
Little did he know, though, Chan was also sulking. He was simply better at hiding it.

  
  
Chan didn’t know what was happening to him lately. Perhaps the sleepless nights and insomnia were starting to take their toll on him, causing flashes of some stranger’s face to burst into his memories when he was least expecting it. It was the strangest feeling, Chan thought, to have someone show up in his memories when he knew they didn't belong.

  
  
Who exactly was this man that crept into his dreams?

  
  
His dreams were full of this man. This man who he was so familiar and intimate with yet couldn’t even recall their face. It didn't make sense. He and Changbin had been together since either of them could remember. Next door neighbors. Friends. Lovers. Chan had never loved anyone else in his entire life! He could think back to things he knew had only happened with Changbin yet that other man's face was there instead.

  
  
"What's wrong?" Changbin asked, shaking Chan’s shoulder. “You started staring off into space.”

  
  
Chan wasn't sure how to answer. How exactly could he explain that he’d been thinking of some other man? "I just have a lot on my mind," he eventually offered.

 

“That’s why you’re writing this album, remember,” Changbin said, smiling his way through his reservations.

 

“Yeah. Exactly,” Chan mumbled. It’s just that now, he doubted Changbin would be happy with the lyrics that he heard.  


 

  
  
  
Felix stared at the criss-crossing red strings above him.

  
  
Where Yongbok’s job was to keep the tangles to a minimum, it was Felix's job to simply _remove_ what was snapped and tattered to allow room for new strings to take their place.

  
  
Death.

  
  
Birth.

  
  
In the far corner of the sky, at the very edge of his vision, he saw a red thread break.

  
  
He turned his head towards the movement and, without feeling a thing, watched as the string fluttered through the air beneath the Grand Tapestry, lifeless, purposeless.

  
  
When it fell close enough to him, he reached out to it, grabbed it and wound it around his wrist. Swiftly, he followed the snapped thread across the sky, pulling and pulling and pulling until he reached its end.

 

Farther and farther he went, past the edge of the sky to where the other end of the string was tied to Fate itself. He plucked the remaining end of it from Fate’s still, statue-like hands and finished winding the red thread around his wrist. Felix pulled the gathered circle of a lived life from around his hand and placed it on Fate's outstretched palm.

  
  
Slowly, she curled her hand into a fist around it. Her gigantic eyes moved towards him as slow as the rotation of the Earth. "It is done," she spoke softly. "Where one ends... another begins."

  
  
She opened her hand again, but her palm was bare. For now.

  
  
The rest was Felix’s work.

  
  
"What is love," he asked her suddenly.

 

  
Fate grew still. Rather, she was already still but somehow moved _even less_.

 

Felix had never asked anything of her. Not in the millennia he had existed had he ever thought to question her.

  
  
"Can love be made,” he pondered, thinking of his twin brother’s mad plan. “Can love be created? Can it be forced?"

  
  
Fate said nothing. She just lowered her large eyes from Felix’s inquisiting stare and lifted her empty palm slightly higher, reminding Death of his duty.

  
  
Accepting that he would not get an answer out of her, Felix gripped the nail at the tip of her finger and pulled, forming a brand new red thread. A new life. It was tiny and transparent like a spider's web--barely a glimmer in the twilight--but all lights were until they were brightened by hopes and wishes and dreams.

  
  
"Is love something for us,” Felix pressed, staring at the new life in his hands. "Are we meant to have it?" He didn’t even know what it was, what it entailed. He just wanted to have an idea of why his brother would go so far.

  
  
Fate remained quiet, but the cold look in her eyes was answer enough.

  
  
Felix sucked in a deep breath. Then he turned and dropped back to the surface of the human world, someone’s miraculous beginning clutched between his trembling fingers.   


 

 

  
  
  
Yongbok continued to alter Chan's dreams and memories at night and monitor his work during the day.

  
  
For a while, it seemed like all of his efforts weren't changing anything because Chan and Changbin continued to spend the majority of their waking hours together. They made music together. Made food together. Made laughter together. Made love.

  
  
Yongbok ignored his other nightly duties, focusing solely on his fascinating project. Days like this turned into weeks and the Grand Tapestry suffered as a result. Yongbok did not care, however. At least not until he truly started to believe that what he was doing was changing nothing. One evening, after the sun set and the moon rose, Yongbok turned his gaze to the Grand Tapestry and noticed that Chan's thread had significantly changed from the image he remembered.

  
  
The color of it was dim and washed out. It was slowly beginning to come undone, fraying and fraying along its length. It even sat lower in the sky than he remembered and if it weren’t for the fact that it still stretched from horizon to horizon, he probably wouldn’t be able to pick it out among all the other threads in the Grand Tapestry.

  
  
Had it been a subtle change? Or an abrupt one? If he had been paying more attention to the Grand Tapestry as a whole, would he have spotted the thread’s deterioration sooner? Yongbok raced to Chan’s house that night to discover the man and Changbin in the middle of a heated argument.

  
  
"Who are you?" Chan shouted at the top of his lungs, pushing Changbin away from him. "Why do you keep following me? How did you get in my house?"

  
  
"What are you talking about, Chan?" Changbin shouted back, his eyes damp with tears. "We’ve been at each other’s side since we were kids. How can you treat me like I’m some stranger?"

  
  
"Because you are!" Chan screamed the words. "I've never seen you before in my life. Get out!"

  
  
“In your life? Chan, we’ve been in love with each for a decade!”

 

“No we haven’t. I don’t know who you are. I’m in love with someone else!”

 

Such a loud and painful declaration made Changbin burst into tears and run out of the house.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Felix noticed the change in Chan's thread as well. It was like a famous art piece had been defaced. It was like one of the wonders of the world had been destroyed.

  
  
The next time the twins saw each other, it was the first thing Death mentioned to Sleep. "What have you done?"

  
  
Yongbok had absolutely no regrets. "I just want him to look at me. I just want him to look me in the eye and tell me he loves me." The words should have been passionate and heartwarming, but coming from Yongbok as he lounged in the center of a cloud full of snow and hail, his words sounded more like a dark threat.

  
  
"Do you even know what that means?" Felix asked, narrowing his eyes. “Do you even realize what it is you’re asking for?”

 

Yongbok did not reply. His eyes saw but didn’t see his brother standing in front of him.

 

“Can’t you tell,” Felix attempted, “that we are too Great for something like human love?”

  
  
"We aren’t,” Yongbok corrected him. “I've gone into his dreams. I've experienced these feelings of absolute bliss and of joy and pleasure and release. I know that that is love."

  
  
"You only _think_ you know love because you've stolen such feelings from someone else!"

  
  
Yongbok startled as if he had only just then become aware of his brother’s presence.

  
  
"Isn't it obvious that we shouldn't know of such trivial human behaviors?" Felix could only hope his words were getting through to his twin. "That's why we've never known such things for as long as we lived." Yet Felix was trembling with the one human emotion he knew best: despair. "Why do you want to suffer like a human so badly? What about your Greatness is so lacking?"

  
  
Yongbok remained silent, intimidated by his brother’s raw display of emotion.

  
  
"Didn't I tell you that we aren't opposites," Felix continued. "We do our jobs well and we both prosper… but shatever you ruin gets ruined for me as well!"

  
  
Yongbok swallowed, finding it difficult to breathe with his fearsome brother standing so close, yet also finding it difficult to muster even the slightest bit of guilt.

  
  
Perhaps his twin could sense that. He muttered, "But if ruin is your goal, it won't do me any good to fight against you."

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Chan couldn't sleep. He usually couldn’t sleep but tonight was different. His dreams were a battlefield, his head and heart locked in a vicious war.

 

  
  
When daylight hours rolled along and he crawled out of bed far more exhausted than when he crawled into it, he walked around his small, empty house instinctively aware that something very important was missing. Not just from the house but from his life.

 

  
  
Yet how could he miss someone he honestly didn't remember meeting? What was this strange thing that inhabited every crevice of his dreams and thoughts and memories? And why did the one emotion that swallowed him when he thought of it was… love? _What_ was he in love with? How was it something that he couldn’t properly see or name or feel?

 

  
  
So when he chose to go out to the grocery store and was tapped on the shoulder, he wasn't surprised at all to turn around and see a man standing there. A man who looked so familiar to him despite the fact that this was their first meeting. The man pushed his dark, wild hair away from his face and stared up at Chan, his eyes pleading and hopeful... “Have you really forgotten me,” he asked in a heavy but frightened voice. “Is there really… someone else?”

 

Chan looked at him long and hard. Taking in the sight of this stranger who spoke to him with such familiarity. Who grabbed his hand and squeezed it with such practiced intimacy. Chan knew him. But he didn’t know him. Somehow. He knew the man in a way that his fingers remembered how to grip his hand but he didn’t know the man in a way that should make the flutter in his chest make sense. They didn’t know each other. So how come they _knew_ each other? "Changbin,” Chan asked.

 

Changbin cried happy tears and nodded vigorously.

 

“How do I know your name,” questioned Chan, so confused that he was sure he was dreaming.

 

Changbin only hugged him.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Yongbok, who stood in the grocery store aisle next to the two men, witnessed this interaction with horror. Even when he had dove deep into Chan's conscious and changed his feelings and memories, Chan still chose Changbin over him.

  
  
Yongbok let his jealousy consume him as he watched the two of them reconnect, as they fell in love all over again. As they made new memories to fill in the holes Yongbok’s work had made.

  
  
Days passed. Weeks. Months. And before Yongbok’s eyes, he watched Chan's thread in the sky regain its strength, regain its brightness and its brilliance and its height in the sky. Helplessly, he watched it regain its Greatness. No matter how he tried to alter the tread and force himself back into it, the Great Tapestry seemed to resist him. None of the memories he altered stuck to the material and the old ones he’d changed peeled and sloughed off of it, falling through the sky like glittering diamonds, like a swarm of shooting stars.

 

No matter how Yongbok tried to catch the memories he had made, they always found a way to slip between his small fingers.

  
  
"You can't go against Fate," Felix warned him late one evening. "I made her look at the mess you made of the Great Tapestry and she won't stand to have her work tampered with. That's why she fixed it."

  
  
Yongbok fought back a sob, fed up with everything he wanted being right out of his reach. Always. "You always take what I want from me."

  
  
Felix’s silence spoke louder than words ever could.

  
  
"If you hadn’t interfered, he would be been mine by now."

 

“If _I_ hadn’t interfered?” Felix’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “You mean if Fate could be changed...”

 

“You shouldn’t have told her, Felix.”

 

“I’m not a Felix. I’m too Great for a name.”

 

“You shouldn’t have told her.”

  
  
"Don't you think she would have found out on her own?" Felix snapped. He had never realized until then that his twin could be so selfish and stubborn. "Don't you think she'd notice how much the Great Tapestry was shedding?"

  
  
"I love him,” Yongbok said darkly.

 

“That’s not your Fate, brother,” Felix said to him. For a brief time, he let his eyes wander to the pinks and oranges and yellows of the setting sun. “Our only task is to weave. Humans are the ones who get to love.”

 

Yongbok wasn’t listening. "I'll make look at me. I won’t have it any other way."

  
  
Felix scowled. "You'll ruin it for the both of us."

 

“That’s the problem! I don’t want to share his thread with you!” He bit his bottom lip so hard that it bled. “Why do I have to share everything with you?”

 

“Because the Grand Tapestry is ours. Together. I’ve never wanted to take anything from you so why are you so desperate to take this from me?” Felix was overwhelmed with the desire to strike his brother. To inflict wounds on him. But that would be too human. "You'll unravel the entire Great Tapestry."

  
  
"Good." Yongbok whispered. Without another word, he was gone, right as the sky lit up with the blue threads of human dreams.

  
  
Felix looked up at the sky. It was nighttime now. The moon sat low on the horizon. Round, yellow.

  
  
To his brother, the map of people's dreams would be displayed right now.

  
  
To Felix, it was just a dark, dull, empty sky.

  
  
He hadn’t wanted to believe it but perhaps he and his twin had no similarities after all?

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Chan smiled.

  
  
As the weeks slipped by, he found himself wondering how he got along so well with Changbin. He didn’t know how he knew them, but he could list Changbin’s likes and dislikes, he was used to the man’s bad and weird habits, and now that he looked around his house, there were already a number of photos of him and Changbin together. It was like the two of them being together was Fate. A life straight out of a dream.

  
  
But there was something else.

 

In the moments before he fell asleep most nights, someone else crept into his mind. Just like with Changbin at the grocery store, he seemed to know the man’s name even though they had never met. “Yongbok,” he whispered into the dark before Sleep took over.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Yongbok stepped into Chan’s bedroom right at the stroke of midnight.

  
  
Both Chan and Changbin were present. Yongbok was growing used to the awful fact that he would never see one without the other. There they lay beneath white bedsheets, the blue threads of their consciousness protruding from their foreheads and reaching up through the ceiling to join the Grand Tapestry.

  
  
Yongbok nearly turned and left but then hesitated when he realized that Chan, whose face normally carried an expression of peace--sometimes even a happy smile--in his sleep, looked troubled. Terrified, even.

  
  
Now that Yongbok paid careful attention, he could see the way Chan's thread of Fate was drawn painfully tight, almost as if something or someone were pulling on it from the other end.

  
  
Yongbok tilted his head back. For someone Great like him, the ceiling offered no obstruction. He could follow Chan’s thread all the way up to the Grand Tapestry where it was easy to spot an all-too-familiar silhouette with his hand on the string.

  
  
“Felix,” Yongbok shouted, knowing that his Greatness would let him be heard despite the distance.

  
  
Caught in the act, Felix glanced down at him. They made eye contact with one another. “I have no name,” Felix told him and then quickly fled.

  
  
No sooner had Death let go of the thread than Chan's face flattened into a picture of calm once more. His nightmare had eased.

  
  
Yongbok sighed in relief and went back to standing over Chan’s bed, wishing more than anything that he wasn’t Great so that he could push the man's sweat-damp hair out of his eyes.

 

Then he discovered something.

  
  
When he realized it, Yongbok gasped and hooked his eyes back up towards the sky.

  
  
How had Felix seen the dream?

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Felix didn't have to wait long for his twin to come after him. In fact, he was beginning to think his brother wasn’t smart enough to figure things out when he spotted his younger twin soaring through the Grand Tapestry towards him.

  
  
"What are you after," Yongbok screamed at him.

  
  
"I can ask you the same thing," Felix retorted, not even flinching as Yongbok collided with him and sent them both tumbling through thin, white clouds.

  
  
Yongbok snarled viciously, "Who do you think you are, messing with dreams?"

  
  
"Who are you,” Felix spit back, “messing with life?"

  
  
They landed on a relatively large cloud and the impact knocked them apart, sending them both sprawling.

  
  
Felix was the first to recover from the fall and stand up. "Do you see how wrong you are now?" He stepped across the cloud. “Why can’t you be satisfied with being Great?” He reached out a hand in hopes of helping his twin get to his feet.

 

Yongbok slapped his hand away. "Why is it such an awful thing for me to _want_ something?" He turned so that he could put his back towards his brother. "Every night, I touch goals and dreams and wishes… So why am I not allowed to have any dreams?"

 

“Because it’s not Fate,” Felix said. Honestly, truly, that by itself should explain everything yet he knew it would not be an end to their discussion. "Do you think I long for death? Do you think I enjoy being feared and hated? To want, to _love_ … That is for humans."

  
  
"So I can’t have anything?"

  
  
"You are Great. You shouldn’t even know what wanting something _is_!"

  
  
"But I do! Because wanting something… That's what wishing is all about." Yongbok didn’t even know he was capable of producing tears until right then. He twisted around to stare up at his brother with his tear-red eyes. "But you don't know what dreams are, do you, Felix?"

  
  
“I have no name.” Felix fell quiet, lacking the energy to continue the argument. He had tried to understand. With every piece of himself, he had tried, but his own twin, someone who used to be his perfect mirror, was now showing him something he could never, ever know. "Will you be happy this way?"

  
  
"For a while, yes,” said Yongbok. “I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  
  
Felix lowered his gaze, feeling invisible. “Did you really think you were alone all of this time?”

  
  
Yongbok didn't answer him. He had already descended to the surface of the earth.

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Yongbok appeared at Chan's bedside, the room as familiar to him as the patterns of the Great Tapestry.

  
  
He stared down at Chan’s sleeping form. At Changbin draped over him, snoring. He stared at how their dreams wound tightly together as they dreamed about each other. Such happiness disgusted him. He wanted it for himself. "Since making you dream of me doesn't make you love me,” Yongbok grumbled, "I’ll just make you stop dreaming."

  
  
He reached for Chan’s forehead and grabbed hold of the origin of his thoughts. With the new tension on the thread, Chan’s face contorted with distress as his dream transformed into a nightmare.

  
  
"I just want you to say you love me," Yongbok pleaded, in tears. "I just want someone to love me."

  
  
He _pulled_ , but the thread stayed fast. He'd never done something like this before so he wasn't entirely sure how much strength he should apply. He wound a bit of blue thread around his wrist for a bit better of a handhold and then tried again. He tugged harder, grunting from the effort. Several seconds passed before he felt the thread give way the tiniest bit.

  
  
Chan shouted out in pain, writhing beneath the covers at the Great pressure on his dreams. The commotion woke Changbin almost immediately and the man started shaking Chan in a wild-eyed, frantic attempt to wake him.

  
  
This angered Yongbok. If Chan woke up, his string would vanish until he fell asleep again. It was too close to dawn for any interruptions. He was already at the end of his patience and couldn’t imagine sitting through another day. He wouldn’t let Changbin come between him and Chan ever again. He did this now. Or he never would. With one great heave, Yongbok pulled on the white-blue thread above Chan’s forehead. He h _eaved_ and then heard the sickening snap of it breaking free. Not even a moment later, the thread ripped free from his hand, burning his palm and wrist as it snapped up into the Grand Tapestry, broken.

  
  
Breathless but satisfied, Yongbok turned back to Chan who lay eerily still beneath the sheets.

  
  
Changbin was screaming and crying, begging for the man to wake, but Yongbok easily ignored such a ruckus.

  
  
Now that he'd received the one thing he'd been hoping for all of this time, he could ignore the end of the world if it came to that. Even as Chan’s thoughts spiraled inwards, forever lost and broken in the void of his own subconscious, there was just enough Greatness in him for him to peer past Changbin and stare straight at Yongbok.


End file.
